Soccer Supremo - A Sports Progression Fantasy

10.

Monday, August 14

I prowled around the main pitch at Bumpers Bank, where we were playing an unusually intense training match. The Chester boys were lined up in a cautious 4-2-3-1, while the Saltney set was in its now-customary 3-2-4-1.

That’s right, someone had double-booked the training pitch again! Crazy and unprofessional. One of these days, I was going to find out who was in charge of the scheduling and give him the hairdryer. If a player got injured in such a match, could we make a claim with the insurance company? How could I explain to our fans that Pascal Bochum would miss a few weeks because he had been kicked up the arse by Henry Dunston, a former Wrexham player? I wasn’t quite sure of the legalities and the potential PR effects of mixing all the players together, but I knew it was damned good for CA growth, so until the double bookings stopped we were making the best of a bad situation. Chester, by a crazy coincidence, were playing exactly like Young Boys of Bern would play tomorrow night. And on Wednesday and Thursday, when the pitch would no doubt be double-booked again, Saltney would play an awful lot like Chester’s weekend opponent, Brighton.

The ball came to me on the left of the pitch, five yards in my own half. The Swiss players - sorry, the Chester players - formed up around me, blocking my passing angles but not getting too tight lest I simply dribble past them and open space that way. With the simple options blocked, I looked for something more complex.

I looked to the far flank and yelled, ”Magnus! Get on this! In behind!” I pointed to the gap behind the defence, about ten yards inside the Chester/Young Boys half, and shaped to play a hard-to-execute, impossible-to-defend pass. Then I cracked the ball as hard as I could, straight at goal.

Chester’s goalie, Marek, said, ”Oh, shit,” and scrambled back, but got nowhere near it. The ball slapped into the back of the net. I earned applause; Marek jeers. He slapped his hips. ”Stop doing that!”

I yelled back, ”Young Boys’ keeper doesn’t come out that far! You’re supposed to be doing an impression of him! So we can practise!”

”He is shit,” yelled Marek. ”I can’t pretend to be shit.”

”He might be shit but I’ve never scored on him from 60 yards. Twice,” I added, which was funny if grammatically strange.

Marek muttered to himself as he went to fish the ball out of the goal.

”Come on, guys,” I said. ”Go again, but let’s do the things Young Boys might actually do in the game, yeah?” I spent twenty seconds telling the players to get back to where they were, then said, ”Play!” I took a couple of steps infield, leaned back, and pushed a pass through Chester’s back line.

Magnus ran after it and got to it ahead of Murray Burnett. The Evertonian slid in to make the tackle but after a double deflection, Magnus was able to keep the ball. He played a simple pass to Colin Beckton, who ran at Marek. The giant Slovakian rushed out and spread himself. Colin looked like he was going to pass the ball into the bottom left. He shaped to do just that, but waited a fraction of a second, played the ball square, and Magnus had an easy side-foot finish.

I turned towards Murray Burnett, but Peter was already on it. ”Never dive in as the last man. Always stay on your feet.”

Murray said, ”I thought it was worth the risk. Magnus got lucky, right?”

I said, ”Stay on your feet, give the oppo a decision to make. You did it great against Arsenal. When you made them choose, they chose wrong 9 times out of 10. This one, even if Magnus makes the pass, which isn’t an easy one with you in the way, you track him and Colin has to shoot. Marek’s incredible one-v-one.”

Murray looked from Peter to me then at the place where he had slid in. He glanced at the net, where Marek was once again recovering the ball. Murray’s face scrunched up, he nodded, and his Decisions score increased by 1, turning green as it did so.

Result!

”Time!” yelled Sandra, from the side.

The rest of the lads walked towards the changing rooms. Some took their training tops off to expose their abs to the hot morning sun. Red tops for Saltney, blue for Chester, and plenty of green. The morning had seen five almost instant CA pops amongst the guys who had played against Arsenal, while Saltney’s guys were turning green faster than the Incredible Hulk.

The old guard, Dumi, Edgar, and Colin, had added three points since pre-season. Not much, but it was very pleasing. They had looked after their bodies over their careers, I wasn’t asking them to play three times a week, and our style of play wasn’t incredibly demanding. Why shouldn’t they make gains?

Magnus was one of many Bordermen who had gained 5 points; he was CA 139 now. He was five years younger than Dumi, so if he wanted it, he could maintain his level for half a decade or more. What level, though? If he didn’t cap this season...

Then there were the guys who had added 6 points. One point a week, regular as clockwork, which to me hinted that there was plenty of latent improvement already in their legs, such that even if we stopped giving them Champions League minutes, they would continue to improve for a while. But why would we stop?

I was keeping a very close eye on Ludo Peeters. He had eased from CA 81 to 87, had made five CL appearances as a sub, and would start tomorrow’s match. He had PA 196 and I felt strongly that high PA players improved faster than normal ones. So given his enormous potential and his relatively low starting point, given that he had already had far more exposure to elite football than 99% of players his age, given the quality of the facilities and the standard of coaching, assuming he played home and away against the Swiss champions then played eight more times in the Champions League proper, wasn’t it possible that Ludo would have the single best year of CA growth in the history of the Max Best Universe?

”Do you want me to come?” said Colin.

I blinked at him, then followed his gaze. On the touchline was a defender who was currently registered to Glasgow Celtic. Next to him were his parents. ”Yes! Des Walker. What a name for a defender! Who did the famous one play for? Notts Forest, Sheff Wed, Sampdoria?

”England.”

”Of course.”

Colin sang. ”You’ll never beat Des Walker!” He put his arm across me to stop me walking. ”Are you trying to buy this kid because he’s got a ready-made chant?”

”Bro,” I complained. ”As if. Come on! You’re the only guy old enough to remember that.” He stared at me; I crumbled. ”The name is a plus point, yes. There go Arsenal... foiled by Des Walker! Well, if he’s half as good as his namesake... Yeah. You got me.”

”Knew it,” said Colin, as we started walking again.

Des Walker was 17 and had the Attributes and build of a right back, though the curse said he could play in the centre, too. He was pretty average-looking, uncomplicated, decent haircut for a Scot, with his outstanding feature a quizzical smile and a way of looking at you that made you think he knew something you didn’t. Now, though, he was in full fanboy mode, which from the way his parents were grinning must have been pretty rare. ”You scored from 60 yards!”

”Tish,” I said. I looked over my shoulder towards the spot I had taken the shot from. I squinted, formed, right angles with my thumbs and fingers and moved them around as if I was looking through a rangefinder. ”More like 52.” I rubbed my hands. ”So, what did you think?”

Des Walker shook his head, eyed his dad. ”It’s so fast. Everyone’s running around at a million miles an hour but then you’ve got Peter Bauer popping passes through the lines like it’s nothing, William Roberts just bulldozing everyone, getting space out of thin air.”

”What did you make of Demetrescu?”

Des nodded. ”Brill. He doesn’t look like much, does he? He’s unfussy. But he’s top. I never seen him play for Bayern, I don’t think, but he’s top.”

The dad said, ”Knows his job, doesn’t he? He’s stripped it back.”

”I love that description,” I said. ”That’s exactly it. When you’re training against Adam Adebayo and Danny Kowalski, if you’ve got any quirks or chinks in your armour, they’re gonna use that. Strip out everything that’s not essential and you might survive.”

The mum said, ”Is that what you want for our Des?”

I looked back at the green expanse of the pitch. Dumi was CA 151. Des was PA 155. I’m not sure why, but I replied to the mum by talking directly to Des. ”You can get to his level, I’m sure, but it won’t be quite the same. I see you as giving a team that defensive solidity but with a tiny bit more attacking output than Dumi. You can beat a man and get a cross in. I see you as a right-sided Kieran Tierney.” Tierney had played for Celtic, Arsenal, and Scotland.

The dad’s face lit up. ”That’s what I think, too! Everyone says I’m daft.”

I frowned. ”Why’s that daft? They’re identical. I would have said Des is a Tierney regen but their careers overlapped. Mmm,” I said, nodding to myself. ”One big difference will be how your careers diverge. You’ll go from being a high-energy nuisance on the right to being a calm elder statesman in the middle.”

”Centre back?” said the dad. ”Oh, no, he doesn’t play centre back. Not tall enough, for one thing.”

I smiled. ”I’ll back my own opinion on that one, I think. I just scored from 70 yards, after all.” Des and his mum laughed, but the dad wasn’t sure what to think. I remembered I was supposed to be pitching Chester to the family. ”Right, here’s where I’m at. I need a right back for my Youth Cup team. Des is 17, so he can play this season and next. The squad is absolutely mint and we will start the season as favourites for the cup. I’m trying to add a right back,” I pointed to Des, ”and a striker. I had an agent who pitched me a really talented kid but he’s a bit of a mard-arse. I want good lads here. Team players. We’ve got the most talented squad and the best attitude. That’s why we’re gonna be very, very hard to beat. I know you’ve got plenty of options...”

I got a football and flicked it up.

”But I’m the only director of football who can do this.”

I did a rabona move and slapped the ball into the side of my leg, where it stayed.

”Hang on,” I said.

I did the move again, and again nothing much happened.

”Hang on, this worked perfectly yesterday.”

Colin pushed me. ”Max! What are you doing?” He laughed and shook his head. He looked at the mum and said, ”He’s messing about. He’s got a strange sense of humour, sometimes. Max, I don’t know why you think now’s a good time for tekkers but just do it.”

I laughed. ”If I do it first time, they don’t know how hard it is!”

I let the ball drop to the grass as a kind of reset, then flicked it up on the left side of me. When it got to about knee height, I twisted my body and used my right heel to propel the ball vertically upwards. I let it float over my head, then trapped it under the same heel on the right side of my body. Des Walker’s eyes bulged.

I said, ”I call this move the ’please come to Chester, please please please I’m desperate I’ll do tricks like a performing seal, pleeeeeeease.’”

Colin scoffed. ”I think what Max is trying to say is, this is a place for footballers by footballers. Nothing against Celtic, but when my girls are older, I’ll hope they get in here.”

I wagged my finger. ”Celtic’s youth system is good. It’s fine to stay there. They rate you and they’ve got you lined up for the fast track. I can’t lie and say it wouldn’t be good there. But I can’t lie and say Chester isn’t better. This is the best there is. I’m someone who doesn’t like to tell the same story twice, the same joke twice, but there’s one thing I never, ever get tired of and that’s optimising the career development of young players. Who played against Arsenal? Cole, Roddy, Bark, Pascal, Wibbers, Gabriel. They’re not on the fast track, they’re on the right track.”

Colin said, ”Don’t forget Dominic and Hamish. Hamish is Scottish,” he added, for the benefits of the Walkers.

”Hamish is the greatest living Scotsman,” I said. ”Did you see him kicking lumps out of Dougal Boyle? We’re good here, we want to play the right way, but we’re not snowflakes. But yeah, two of our Youth Cup squad made their Premier League debuts on Saturday. That’s why we’ll win the Youth Cup again. And the manager, a handsome chap named Colin, is currently playing in the Champions League. Can any other under 18 team say that? Of course they cannot. It’s preposterous how much resource I put into the Youth Cup. Someone should stop me.”

The dad said, ”Will Des play in the Prem this season?”

I held my hand up. ”I can’t make any promises. There are so few games and our squad will be quite bloated soon. I think I’m on very safe ground promising some appearances on the subs bench. Travel with the team, warm up in famous stadiums, learn what it’s like. Every member of the youth team gets that. Actual minutes? That’s hard at this point.”

”It’s just we’re close to breaking into Celtic’s team. It’s like you said, he’s on the fast track there.”

”Right but I’ve made Celtic an offer that suits everyone. I’ll buy Des, but there will be a buy-back clause that kicks in two years from now. You’ll have two options then. Extend with Chester or go back to Celtic. If you go back, there won’t be any hard feelings from me because you’ll have given me two more Youth Cups. God, I love winning trophies! And think about it from Celtic’s POV. They get a million quid right now, and in two years they can buy you back for four mill. They know I’ll add more than three million to your value in that time, turn you into a proper, proper player, and they can swoop in and snap you up. But if you don’t improve, which is always a risk with young players, they’ve got the million. Money in the bank. Scoops of greenbacks for the green and white hoops!” I glanced behind me again. Most of the players were already inside. ”I don’t want to be rude but Celtic don’t have players of the quality of Dumi Demetrescu, Edgar Wilde, Peter Bauer. They’ll teach you what they know. Sometimes you’ll train against Wibbers, Pascal, Ruud Berkenbosch. They’ll teach you what you don’t know.”

”Great line,” said Colin.

”Yeah?” I beamed. ”Okay, I’ll end on that high. I need to get a shower anyway; I’ve got a busy day. Colin’s gonna show you around and introduce you to Ruth, who’s got an agency and will help you out on this deal for free whether you join the agency or not. Ryan Jack will be there and he’ll tell you all about how we help the new lads settle into the club and the area. You can have lunch in the canteen - it’s great - or go somewhere fancy. Your choice! If you’ve got questions, worries, let us know.” I shook hands with the family and was about to leave when the voices in my head grew too loud to ignore. I put my hand on Des Walker’s shoulder and gazed at him with intensity. ”Marauding right back loses a yard of pace, reinvents himself as a positionally-sound ball-playing centre back. If I don’t see you again, remember what I just said. I’m never wrong about these things.” I patted him a couple of times. ”Kay. Seeya.”

***

I got changed, grabbed a sandwich and some fruit from our canteen, hopped in the Mini, and drove.

First stop was Wrexham to check the state of the pitch at The Racecourse. Then it was sunglasses back on, and west. West on the A5, west for miles.

***

Next stop was Valle Crucis Abbey, a ruin. The name means Valley of the Cross, which was apt for me because I was valleygood at crossing. Um, yeah. Cut that.

Emma had researched the abbey when we did our big, sweeping tour of Cheshire and North Wales, but back then the site had been closed because of bad weather. With the summer of 2028 as hot as it was, the main risk would be burning my feet on the ancient stone paths.

There were quite a few tourists, and we pottered around through the wreckage of the old space. The most striking feature was the west end, which was almost intact, standing upright and proud hundreds of years after the rest had tumbled. I couldn’t get my head around the fact that this one side was still standing without the support you would think it needed.

The rest was a cross between Harry Potter and Skyrim. It was fascinating to walk around without a guide, without knowing anything. There were two similar rooms featuring human-sized rectangular slabs of stone. I assumed they were all graves, and some were exactly that, but the second room was actually a dormitory. The monks slept on stone beds.

I sat in the courtyard, on the grass, partially hidden by a round stone thing that might once have been a well. Relaxed as eff, I ate an apple and did some reading about the location. I must have walked past the ’only surviving monastic fishpond in Wales’ without realising it. And I certainly wouldn’t have thought I was standing in one of the richest spots in all of Wales.

It began in austerity but was later celebrated by poets for its lavish hospitality – meals were served in silver vessels and ale ‘flowed like a river’. In Wales, only Tintern Abbey was richer when Valle Crucis was dissolved by royal decree in 1537.

From vast wealth to irrelevance in a matter of decades. From irrelevance to ruination in a matter of centuries. I once read a book called The Good Earth, in which a Chinese farmer, through diligent hard work and grand strategic thinking slowly built an empire, only for it to be frittered away in no time at all by his wastrel kids.

That could be Man City, I thought. I swept my gaze across the stonework. This could be Arsenal.

There was a poem that fit this particular situation. Dude goes into the desert and sees the remains of a statue. There’s an inscription.

My name is Pepe Salazar. Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!

But while the pedestal hints at a great city and an empire beyond, and has an entire section about a glorious 4-0 win over a newly-promoted team that was ’too big for its boots’, it’s all gone, eroded and swallowed by the sand.

I plucked a blade of grass and thought about putting it between my lips like I used to when I was a kid, but I remembered that this was a dog-friendly space. It was interesting, though, wasn’t it? Grass and plants and all that jazz. Renewal was built into the business model. Grass grew and made little grass babies. If a little tree popped up, a deer or a rabbit would nibble it to death.

I had to build Chester in a way that the wastrel kids couldn’t fritter it away. Renewal had to be built in. Our investments would produce money the club could use, but no-one could touch the capital. The club’s wealth would spread into its surroundings, like roots. We own those houses, that car park, that hovercar charging station. While Arsenal crumbled to dust, Chester would be moated. Lush, verdant green all around. Green, for want of a better word, is good. Green meant life. Starlings, swallows, hedgehogs, left backs. Monastic fish. What would a monastic fish even be? A fish that believed in Jesus? Jesus had a fish for a logo, didn’t he? Weird branding. Hey, wait! I know all about monastic fish. They’re literally called monkfish!

I typed monkfish into my phone and went ”Urgh!” because it was the hideously ugly one that seems like it has to be fake.

”Excuse me,” came a voice.

I blinked and looked up. There was a woman and a kid who looked about thirteen. ”Sup?” I said.

She touched the kid on the shoulder. ”My James is wondering if you’re Max Best.”

”Does James want to lecture Max Best about any of the following topics: Rotating goalkeepers; not having a coherent squad on opening day; the difference between mischief and monkeying?”

”It’s him!” cried the kid.

The mum frowned. Her hair was stuffed upwards, purplish-red, and her arms were incredibly white, like they had literally never experienced the sun. ”Can he get a selfie?”

I smiled. ”You don’t know who I am, do you?”

”Something to do with football. It’s always football with him.”

Huh. I thought about getting the little brat a football from my car so I could Playdar him, but this was a holy site. Unlike certain football managers I could mention, I had boundaries. ”James, I will let you have a selfie on one condition. No, two conditions.”

”What?” he said.

”One, you must not let any of those randos know who I am. Okay? I’m doing important stuff over here. And two, you must look at this photo of a fish and tell me if you think it’s a real thing that exists or if someone invented it for a prank.”

”Okay. Show me.” I did. ”Ewwwww! What’s that?”

”It’s called a monkfish. Isn’t it crazy? All these articles say it’s delicious but it looks like it’s got a sensitive soul. I don’t want to eat things that have feelings. I gave up pig stuff, although I will admit I ate some salami by mistake because I forgot what animals do what.”

We posed for the photo. The kid looked around at the ruins and said, ”What are you doing here?”

”What are you doing here?”

”Mum says I should learn about where I come from and stuff like that.”

I wagged my finger at him. ”That’s good. I like that. I’m doing the same thing.”

”But you’re not from here!”

”Tomorrow night I’ll be at The Racecourse in Wrexham, representing Wales. My team’s the Welsh champions. The Welsh FA supported me and if we win, it’s good for Welsh football. I was thinking about going super Welsh.”

The mum said, ”What does super Welsh mean?”

”Five hundred oversized flags, a thousand guys from choirs all over the country. I’m talking fifty thousand pounds just for the transport and the hotels, fifty thousand quid to get the ten minutes before kickoff absolutely rocking. The national anthem, the song from Zulu, Is It A Monster? Super, super Welsh, super super spine-tingling, get everyone’s pulses racing, go hard at it.” I leaned back with my palms on the grass behind me. ”But I decided it would sort of come out of nowhere, would be a bit unearned, so we’re gonna keep with the gay theme. Poppy bangers. Murder on the Dance Floor, stuff like that. High energy, loads of fun for people who don’t normally go to football matches. I want to make fun of the Swiss while I’m at it, but it’s literally impossible. They have to be the least interesting nation ever. Boo! Boo, the Swiss!”

”They’re the ones with the cuckoo clocks.”

”Right!” I said. ”But they deny it! They say it’s nothing to do with them. So you start chatting shit about the cheese, saying it’s full of holes, they go oh yeah but that’s only one kind of cheese, we’ve got 400. They are the worst conversationalists. Urgh.”

”I think you were explaining why you’re here?” she said.

”I explained!” I said. ”I’m representing Wales so I’m learning about the country! Soaking up the vibes and stuff. I’ve been loads of times but it’s normally frantic. Go from A to B to C. You can’t learn about a place like that, can you? You have to spend a little bit of time.” I rubbed a section of the grass, wondering what Jonny Planter would have made of it. ”I’ve been ruminating on the colour green,” I said.

The mum didn’t realise I had changed the topic, so she said, ”Like on the Welsh flag.”

”Er...” I said, because just then I couldn’t remember any green on the flag. ”There’s red...”

”It’s half green, half white, with a red dragon. The green represents the green valleys, the white is our beautiful clean skies.”

”Mum!” complained the kid. ”It’s green and white because of the Tudors!” He stormed off while adding, ”So embarrassing!”

”James!” complained the mum. She gave me an apologetic shrug before rushing away in pursuit. ”Good luck tomorrow!”

***

I lay on my back, hands behind my head, and looked up at the blue sky, which according to one expert was often depicted in Welsh art by the colour white.

My stash of experience points had been growing somewhat slowly, with one massive surge caused by the Arsenal game. (Whatever scraps I got by watching matches at Bumpers Bank or one of our satellite pitches went into funding the Secret Sandra training boosts.)

The curse shop needed to be cleared out before I could get to the next part in my powering-up journey, and I had already bought two perks. The first was Bibliotekkers 1.

That one allowed me to see the past 20 match reports for the next opponent, which had never really appealed to me in the past but for a team like Young Boys, where much of the material was in a different language, it was actually really useful. The match reports let me see how the team set up in the Swiss leagues versus what they did in European matches. In other words, it gave me a pretty decent insight into the manager’s way of thinking. The current guy was cocky domestically, but a big scaredy-cat when playing abroad. He usually played 4-2-3-1 and his first switch would be to a 4-4-2 variant. Knowing that was well worth 1,000 XP!

The perk had the typical naming convention that suggested there were more to come in that tree, but Bibliotekkers 2 didn’t appear. If I ever wanted to extend that particular function, I would have to create a custom perk. Fine by me.

The next most instantly useful perk was Wet Wet Wet 2, which doubled my weather forecast to ten days. Handy for gardening! Again, the thread ended there. I wondered if I could suggest a 20-year weather forecast and how much it would cost. I mean, knowing which parts of the globe would be habitable in the future would be worth a small amount of grinding, right?

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

XP balance: 1,987

There were five perks left.

I had enough XP to buy Forex for Dummies, which would give me instant conversions for any in-curse currency. A similar one I would try to buy when I had the ability to create my own perks would be to switch amounts from weekly to monthly to yearly. A lot of foreigners thought I was crazy when I offered to pay them X per week. Conversely, when someone asked me for Y per year, I always had to stick it into a calculator and divide by 52.

The remaining perks were not very interesting. For the hundredth time, I tried to optimise my pathway, but said ’fuck it’ and bought Forex for Dummies. It was the only vaguely useful one for now.

Three perks down, four to go. 28,500 XP needed to take control over another part of the curse’s interface.

XP balance: 987

I sighed. The curse.

Why had I called it that? Because even on day one, as ignorant as I was, I still knew enough. I knew days like Saturday would eventually come. The big audience, the spectacular failure. Success was a trap. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

Hold on just a second, though. As the universe nudged me towards the end of the plank, with shark-infested waters all around, my previous scams and schemes were coming together. If I beat Young Boys, I would have life-changing money.

I would be pushed off the plank, sure, but I would land on a hovercar made of pure cash. The landing would hurt, but not much. While Pepe Salazar, the Daily Mail, and the ’elite’ referees laughed at me, Emma and I would fly off to wherever we wanted.

In the entire course of human history and Old Nick’s demonic game, how many people truly escaped their curses?

None? Five? Two hundred?

Add one to the tally.

***

I got in the car and drove north until I hit the Horseshoe Pass Viewpoint, said to be one of the most breathtaking vistas in the entire British Isles. I wasn’t sure about that, but it was well worth the drive.

I parked the Mini and sat on the bonnet, taking it all in. The rolling hills, the flowing valleys, the wind curiously cold for such a hot day. Green below, white above, and by white I mean blue. Obvs.

Yeah, it was an 8 out of 10 view.

Normal people would probably give it a 10 but the problem was that Emma and I had been to a rewilding lecture on a massive estate in Scotland. The guy started by showing us what Norway looked like, then Scotland. ’These lands used to look the same,’ he said. In Scotland, the forests had been cleared and now deer ate any trees that tried to grow, making the countryside look more like the surface of the moon than was comfortable. Norway, in contrast, was bursting with greenery. ’Once you see this,’ the guy had said, ’you can never unsee it’. I was no expert in the matter but it looked an awful lot like this patch of Wales should have been a megaforest.

My phone buzzed. Briggy had come through!

0.4% for 260 to 300 GBP.

As always, she didn’t mention the name of the company, just in case our phone records were ever seized. And the range of prices was simply to obfuscate. The true number was always the middle of the values, in this case, 280,000 pounds. I switched to the calculator app and did some calculations.

Temps Perdu was currently valued, by whoever was selling this particular batch of shares, anyway, at 70 million quid. Down from 80 mill a year ago. Buying this lot would take my stake up to 1.79%. Not a significant amount, but all I could do was chip away. It wasn’t like a publicly-listed company where you could easily grab a big chunk of the company - Briggy had to track down the shareholders one by one.

I had two million pounds in my personal bank account, just over a million in Gibraltar, and almost three million quid in LIT, formerly Maxterplanalytics UK. There was maybe ten million quid coming down the pipes. The vague plan was to cash out a big chunk of that, but there would be a good few million left to chase the dream of medical treatment for my mum.

Yes, please. More, please.

I slipped my phone away and hugged my ankles. The valley wasn’t as green as it might have been, but it was green enough. It lowered the old blood pressure, if you get me, and boy was it needed.

What the fuck was going on with these referees? Near the end of last season, that one guy had tried to wreck our promotion chances while ensuring Ipswich Town were promoted. Not long after, Ipswich rolled out the red carpet for a far-right politician. They gave him shirts with his name on, assigned him the squad number 10 to show they wanted him in 10 Downing Street. The guys who ran Ipswich Town wanted to live in a dystopian white nationalist hellhole. Keep politics out of sport, unless it’s a fascist, in which case we’ll let him in the dressing room for a photo op.

Infuriating, but surely a coincidence.

Right? Right?

What about Tom England? When Briggy cracked into his phone would we find photos of him at dinner with the far-right nutjob? Or with the bigwigs from Ipswich? Or both?

I rubbed my forehead hard, very much aware that if I ever voiced these thoughts, I would sound like the kind of person who wore tin-foil hats to stop the government reading his mind.

It just didn’t make sense that a ref would go out of his way to make sure Arsenal beat a newly-promoted team. We were going straight down anyway, that was obvious to everyone. Could Saturday’s disgraceful reffing performance have been connected to gambling? How? The bookies knew we were shit. It was very hard to imagine anyone making money from Arsenal beating us. If Tom England had bet a hundred pounds on Arsenal to win, he would have made a profit of two pounds, if that.

None of it made sense, but I believed the ref had one billion percent been incentivised, one way or another, to make sure we lost. I would take that thought to my grave.

I sipped tea from a thermos, trying to calm myself down. The whole point of beating Young Boys was to insulate myself from cold-hearted cheats like Tom England and hot-blooded bastards like Pepe Salazar. I would live in the gap between hot and cold, which I assumed was always cosy and warm.

Note to self: learn how a thermos flask actually works...

”Excuse me.”

In the heat and with the constant hum of the passing cars, I must have dozed off. I sat up and focused. It was an old boy walking a dog. ”Yo.”

Moustache. English accent. He was probably retired. Possibly owned a second home somewhere nearby. He eyed me slowly baking to death on the front of my car and said, ”Are you all right there?”

”Top bins. Never better.”

”But really, now.”

”What? I’ve got a big bonus on the way, my wife is fit, and I’ve never played a text adventure. How could life be better?”

”There are places you can call if you’re feeling a bit, you know.”

It took me a few seconds. ”What, like, depressed? Well, my wife has gone to Manchester for a training course, and you know what those Mancs are like. Can’t trust ’em. And I wasted what could have been a lovely Saturday doing the sporting equivalent of watching paint dry, and the team I support is bottom of the league and to say I’m getting teased is the understatement of the year so, yeah. Maybe I am not firing on all cylinders. I’m all right, though.” He didn’t seem convinced, so I smiled at him. ”I promise. Look.” I dug into the backpack I had next to me and took out two glossy sales brochures. ”I’m thinking of buying a property. Loads to look forward to and all that.”

”Oh, don’t buy a house in this market.”

”No? What would you recommend?”

”Gold sovereigns,” he declared, in a tone which made me strongly suspect I knew which political party he voted for.

”Sounds very Swiss,” I said. ”I’ll look into it. What’s your dog’s name?”

”Chanel,” he said, gruffly, before walking away.

”Wow,” I said to myself, then decided it was as good a time as any to check out the brochures in more detail.

What was the best way to cash out? It was a toss-up between buying more property or shares in dull companies that paid a dividend. There were pros and cons to each approach, but I like the idea of owning something tangible and substantial like the blocks of flats I already had. Normal landlords worried about tenants moving out, but I loved it when that happened because the players I was signing, the new staff, they always needed a place to land, a base from which to settle into the area. Oli Marches, the new goalkeeping coach, was staying in Sticky’s spare room. Des Walker’s mum would be much happier for him to leave Glasgow if he had a nice, clean flat to stay in.

I opened the first brochure. It was a downtown building that wrapped around a ground-floor shop. The shop didn’t come in the deal but nine flats did. Three had three bedrooms, six had two. All were currently rented out, which said a lot about how appealing the block was. It was generating 120 grand a year in income and came with a 1.85 million price tag. A decent, if unspectacular yield of 7%. The flats themselves looked really nice but the views were ugly. Roads and kebab shops and other blocks of flats. It was probably quite noisy and there were only 7 parking spaces.

Yeah, Max, you don’t have to live there. Remember when you lived on 20 grand a year? Buy this and you never have to worry about going hungry. Your kids will always have clothes. You’ll turn some of your weird fantasy UEFA money into something tangible. Think like a capitalist.

I flicked through the brochure some more, then swapped it for the other one. The second block was 2.5 million, 11 units, 16 parking spaces, and far, far more green in the photos. 156 grand a year in income, but the real appeal was visual. The flats were nice on the inside but instead of views of roads they had views of trees and shrubs. You could imagine seeing a squirrel outside instead of a stag party. Des Walker’s mum would love it. Des would love it, too. He would train hard, go home to rest and watch daytime TV, walk to the city centre for fun and adventure.

Shit, if everything else collapsed, Emma and I could live in one of the flats ourselves.

I got my phone out and called Charlotte. ”Max,” she said, surprised. She must have heard the wind pushing across my phone because she said, ”Where are you?”

”I’m in green land,” I said, because sometimes it’s fun to be cryptic. ”Can you do something for me in your role as my property manager?”

”Oh. Am I... still... that?”

”Course you are.”

”It’s just everyone knows you bought the Big Mama House and I don’t have anything to do with that.”

”It’s three flats occupied by three deeply religious Brazilian families. What exactly would your role be? Saying Mass in Latin?”

”What?”

I paused. ”It’s possible I’ve spent too long in the sun today.”

Charlotte took a breath. ”It’s just that you haven’t spoken to me all that much since the, ah, the, ah, the Angel thing. And you have signed two world-class midfielders and I can’t see how I’m getting any minutes this season. And now you call me about property management.”

”Do you like earning thousands and thousands of pounds for making a few phone calls?”

”Actually... yes.”

I laughed. ”So what’s the problem?”

She sighed. ”The problem is I don’t know where I stand with you.”

”It’s easy,” I said. ”When Chester were at rock bottom, when I was nobody, you believed in us. There were three girls who got binned off by Man City but only one of you had the vision to see what was coming. I’ll never forget that, Charlotte. I can be small and petty, I know, but I never forget the big things. That’s one big, enormous plus point on your permanent record. But when you piss me off on an epic scale shortly before we’re due to play a titanic cup match, you can get right in the bin.

”But what’s this? You’ve got so many anti-bin points, you jump right out of the bin. I keep trying to put you in the bin and you keep bouncing straight back out! You’re unbinnable! What the hell is happening! I put you in the bin! I am the king of the bin!” Another dog walker paused on his way past the car. ”Hello,” I said, in a less frenetic tone. ”Cute dog.” The guy sped up. ”Charlotte, you still there?” She was. ”One of the strangest things that goes on inside my head is that I really enjoy paying you thousands and thousands of pounds of my own money to do almost nothing. It’s so weird! I tried talking to Alex Short about it but he kept saying Max, let’s talk about these twenty other traumas first.”

”Am I going to play this season?”

”Yes. Have you heard about the new Nando’s Cup format?”

”No.”

”It’s the Swiss model, like in the Champions League. Basically you grab every WSL and WSL 2 club, except the three that are in Europe, and everyone goes in the computer which spits out six matches for every participant. The results go into a league table, blah blah blah, leading into knockout rounds etcetera etcetera. Long story short, instead of maybe being knocked out after one match, we have at least six games to play. Some will be against WSL 2 teams. It lets us flex our squad, which includes you. Are you going to start against Chelsea? Not if the two superstar midfielders I just bought are fit. But you’ll get some minutes, some starts. You know it’s not charity; you’ve earned the right to play at this level. But you’re really good at this property management stuff and if I buy this next building, we’re starting to get into serious amounts of income. Your cut will be full-time money for part-time work. I trust you to take care of this stuff so that I can focus on doing what I do best, which is infuriating Arsenal fans. Are you in?”

She thought about it, but not for long. ”I’m in.”

”Okay, I’m gonna text you the details of the place. Call Aff and arrange a time to meet and all that. If he doesn’t find a sinkhole or an Indian burial ground, I’m gonna steam in.”

”Okay.” She shifted the phone to her other ear. ”Where are you really?”

”Wales. A beauty spot.”

”What are you doing?”

”I came here with Emma a couple of years ago. We were rushing around, trying to do as much as poss. Min-maxing every day, if you get me. There was a player here. A good player. I can’t remember how I found out about him...” In fact, I remembered exactly. It was almost in this exact spot that I triggered Playdar, but as luck would have it, the great beam of light was smashing into a pitch somewhere back the way we had just come, somewhere towards Wrexham, and there was no way to turn around without telling Emma about the curse. Thus we had continued on our merry way. I didn’t regret it, not for a second, but I did wonder if there were maybe one or two Dragonballs still out there, waiting to be discovered. If I was going to take over as the Wales manager, I was going to need every single player with a PA over 130. ”I just want to tell myself that I did everything I could to find this kid. Emma’s away, people in England only want to talk about how I was portrayed on Match of the Day... I’m both fleeing and doing something productive. I’m Caravaggio.”

”Was he the forward with the pony tail who missed a penalty in the World Cup final?”

You know what? Life’s too short. ”Yes, that’s him. Okay, bye. Thanks for accepting the offer of loads of free money. Bye.”

***

Out: 2.5 million.

In: 11 flats.

Bosh.

That was one for me. Now to do one for Wales.

I got down from the Mini and tried to place myself in the exact same position as the last time I had smacked Playdar from this location. I felt I knew which direction the column of light had appeared. Not quite Wrexham, but over there, to the left.

The map said the most likely location was a town called Bwlchgwyn, pronounced like ’burkwin’.

There wasn’t a pitch that I could see on the app, but I wasn’t in a rush to get there. People were far more likely to play sports in the evening, when it was a little cooler. So I got in the car, blasted some music, and drove along, bopping along to Green Day, Al Green, and just to be really on-point, the Canadian alt-pop band Valley.

***

None of that is true.

I listened to gay bangers.

***

I drove around Bwlchgwyn, which is about a quarter of an hour from Wrexham, but it didn’t seem like this was the place after all. Where would you even play football? There was a park, but there were no goalposts. It was possible that Playdar had wanted to take me to someone’s back garden, but the odds on this particular bolt of lightning striking twice were low. I had three goes at triggering Playdar, but had I even driven in the right direction? I thought I had, but was rapidly losing confidence in that particular memory.

I checked the maps for places further east but at that point you’re basically in Wrexham itself, and they had plenty of scouts. It was perfectly plausible that a good young player from the area would have been missed in all the chaos of the takeover and Wrexham’s rapid rise through the divisions, especially as the owners were focused on buying the players they needed to bully their way up the divisions rather than developing young ones, but I didn’t feel like driving around enemy territory to find out.

”Soz, ancient Playdar dude,” I said, as I turned the Mini around on a tiny side street. ”I tried.”

I eased out onto a bigger road, drove past a few nice houses, then saw something that gave me pause. I pulled into another tiny road, got out, and walked along the thin pavement. The wind had picked up and was blowing through the trees, which created a wonderful noise. Not far away, a gate was slamming open and not-quite-shut. That was less wonderful.

There was a low brick wall that I hopped on, and along the valley I saw an expanse of lush green, dotted with white. The Welsh flag! But that smart little kid’s mum wasn’t right. The flag didn’t represent grass plus sky, it represented grass plus an endless expanse of gleaming white caravans.

Of course! I must have triggered Playdar just as some kids were playing in the caravan park. Talented little brats from anywhere and everywhere. They had come together for a brief time, football had united them, then they had gone home, almost certainly never to return.

That particular Playdar target was gone like the wind.

Gone like the wind? That was the wrong theme, surely?

Creak SMASH creak SMASH!

The gate was absolutely doing my head in. How could you live here with that going on every time the wind picked up?

I walked to the gate and tried to close it, but the hinge was wrecked. If you lifted the whole thing, you could close the gate but if it was an old person who lived there, which it almost certainly was, she wouldn’t be able to open it easily.

”Right,” I said. ”Side quest accepted.” This trip wasn’t going to be a waste. I would leave Wales better than I found it, whether Wales wanted it or not.

***

I pulled up on the road outside a house that had scaffolding everywhere and a crew of men languidly moving tools from one spot to another. I went to the nearest guy. ”Where’s the manager?”

He looked me up and down and spoke with a Welsh lilt. ”That’d be you, wouldn’t it?”

”If I managed a building site, it’d fall down a sinkhole within three days. Know your limitations, that’s my motto.”

He liked that. ”Max the Best. What brings you to Bwlchgwyn?”

I don’t want to get into lazy stereotypes, but he went Full Phlegm on that one. ”A failed project. Busted flush. I’m on a new project which I intend to tackle with new enthusiasm, new vigour. I need a guy who knows his way around a screwdriver and I need him pronto!”

The guy jerked his thumb. ”We’re on a job. You wouldn’t get me away from this job for all the tea in China. I never leave a job, me.”

Another builder had come to see what was happening. He looked fit and strong. Looked like he knew his way around a metal bar, and he was definitely a Wrexham fan because he was giving me one of the oddest looks I’ve ever seen. He said, ”What’s up, Gwynn?”

”It’s that Max Best, Dai. Appeared like a ghost in a grotto. Wants our help.”

”Help?” said Dai. ”After what you did in the playoff final?”

I tried being my normal self. ”How’s it my fault Stefan Sommer can’t set up a team?” That went down like a piece of lead, so I switched tones. ”Lads, look, you know I got my arse handed to me on Saturday. The entire world is mocking me, taking the piss. Match of the Day had a segment, did you see it? Former England internationals looking all sombre as they talked the viewers through all the hilarious things I did. Unsmiling as they methodically pointed out all the rules I was breaking, all the conventions I was upturning. Who knew the BBC had no sense of humour? The network that gave us Mr. Bean.”

”That was ITV,” said Gwynn.

”Was it? Look, lads, I’ve been beat up, I’ve been knocked down. My name is mud. I feel alone and friendless. Won’t you take pity on me?”

Dai took a step forward and squinted. ”What are you doing?”

”I’m trying to cry on demand. It’s not working!”

Gwynn said, ”What do you need doing?”

”Just fix a gate. It’s flapping about in the wind, scaring the tourists. It’s a tiny job.”

Gwynn shook his head. ”We’re fine here, thanks.”

”Gwynn,” said Dai, giving his mate a little push.

”What?”

I gave up the indirect, skilful route. Why not just Arsenal the thing? ”Fifty quid,” I said, slapping my palm.

Gwynn eyed me. ”Fifty?”

”Fifty quid to fix a gate. It can’t be more than a one-minute job. It’s a gate, for fuck’s sake. Man like you could probably fix it just by looking at it and giving it a sharp reproach.”

”Where’s the job?”

”One minute that way.”

”So it’s a three-minute job, at least.”

”Jesus Christ,” I said, laughing. ”Fifty quid for the job, one pound per minute for travel.”

Gwynn rubbed his chin, annoyed with himself for what he was about to say. ”Dai? Grab a toolbox.”

”Yes!” I said, punching the air. ”Get in!”

***

They got in a white van and followed my mini back to the house.

”Here we go,” I said. ”Right bastard, this thing.”

Gwynn and Dai leaned down. Dai pointed to one of the hinges. Gwynn grunted. Dai bent and got to work with a screwdriver. Gwynn supervised him. ”Didn’t know you’d moved into this area, Max.”

I definitely kept a straight face. ”Big time, yeah. Love Wales. The best thing about this village is that I can’t ever be followed here by an English journalist. It’s too hard to pronounce! What are they going to do, ask a Welshman for directions to the town with 9 consonants and one vowel? Welsh guy starts rattling off towns that fit the bill, English guy says fuck it, goes home.”

Gwynn eyed the house. ”Who was that?”

”What?”

”Someone poked her head out of the net curtains.”

”That’s Emma.”

”She was about ninety.”

”That’s my grandmother.”

Dai stood up. ”Your grandmother’s dead.”

I put my hand on my heart. ”What? When?”

Dai shook his head. ”If you don’t live here, you can’t touch the gate.”

Gwynn agreed. ”You can’t just go round fixing things!”

I laughed and said, ”Why not?” But they were adamant it was not the right thing to do. Probably worried about the police turning up or whatever. ”Oh, Jesus. Come on. Come with me. Come on!”

I led them to the front door, and knocked.

A tiny, frail old woman opened the door a few inches. ”Yes?” she said, in a scratchy voice.

”Hello!” I said. ”My name is Stefan Sommer. I’m here to fix the gate.”

”The gate? Oh.”

”Yes, a lot of problems with gates in this town but believe me, we’re working on it as fast as we can. We’re going to be here for maybe two more minutes, then we will be out of your way. Okay? Because the last thing we want is you walking through and the wind blows and topples you and crack! There goes your hip. That’s the last thing we want, isn’t it, Paul Muggles?”

Gwynn twisted his jaw but said, ”Yes, Stefan Sommer, it is. We won’t take long, miss.”

We went back to the gate. Dai bent again, but Gwynn looked at the setup and said, ”Let’s do it proper, yeah?” They got to work. Gwynn glanced at me. ”You don’t know that woman? You’re not her secret landlord or something like that?”

”No.” I clicked my tongue a few times, wondering if I was in the mood for another chat with a stranger. I was. ”Yeah, I came through this way a couple of years back. Me and Emma, we just drove around hitting all the beauty spots, all the nice places to eat, that sort of thing, and when there was a bit of footy going on, we would pop in and watch. I found a few players along the way. Talented little Welsh kids! Someone said there was a good one over this way but, yeah, didn’t have the time to look into it.” I paused because Dai cut himself with his screwdriver.

”I’m okay,” he said.

Weird, but I was enjoying the sound of my own voice. ”Came back today because driving from pitch to pitch is something I can do while my mind wanders. Big match tomorrow so I can’t think about anything serious. Not sure if that makes sense to you.” I pointed towards the gleaming white river of mobile metal. ”Today I realised that the kid I’m looking for was here on holiday. Someone’s seen him, gone holy shit there’s a player, but didn’t have the context.” I stretched. ”It’s fine. It happens. Most tips never lead to anything anyway. I’ve got a WhatsApp group with friendly scouts and if they tell me about a player that I later try to sign, I give them a hundred quid. I’ve paid out less than a grand in about six years.”

Gwynn said, ”Would you pay me a hundred quid to tell you about a player?”

Dai reacted like he had been shocked. ”Gwynn!”

I frowned. Did Dai think he was the next Roddy Jones? Slight problem with that - he was at least 25. Way too late to start a career, even if he had PA 200. I looked up. Would I sign a CA1, PA 200 25-year-old? I reckoned I would, just to see what happened. The guys were staring at me. ”What?”

Dai said, ”My nephew, Gwilym. I always thought he was good. When he was a toddler, he’d kick the ball nice and clean, you know? Always good contact.”

”Ball striking,” I said, with time slowing down around me. Was this really happening? Get pumped 4-0, drop two-and-a-half mill on a building I’ve never seen, discover a player. It was all unreal, like I was in someone else’s body.

”Ball striking, yes! He was just born with it. And he was always the best player in his school, in his age groups, or at least I thought so. Thing is, he was never flashy. He played simple. I thought it was the mark of a classy player but people told me I was talking shit, that he was bang average.”

”How old is he?”

”Fifteen.”

Fifteen. Huh. Pretty old to just be getting started, but there were precedents. ”Where does he live?”

”New Broughton. It’s that way, a few minutes.”

I nodded to myself. That tracked with where I thought Playdar had tried to take me! To Gwynn, I said, ”Have you seen him play? What did you think?”

”He’s bang average. And he gets frustrated, starts kicking people.”

I winced. ”Don’t like that. Don’t like that at all.” A thought struck me. ”Hang on, I might have scouted him at some point. What’s his second name?”

”Roberts.”

I laughed. ”Gwilym Roberts? Are you joking? I go for a moody drive and discover the Welsh Wibbers?” I searched my database, but no such name was listed. ”I’m intrigued. Where is he now?”

”Now?”

”Right now.”

”They’re away. Summer hols. Costa del Sol. Do you want me to...? Call them?”

”Nah, let him enjoy his holiday. When he’s back, you’ll bring him to Chester and we’ll find out once and for all if he’s bang average or if he’s the Welsh Wibbers. Sound good?” I can’t explain it, but I felt utterly certain this kid was gonna be mint. I bent and stared at the gate. ”What happened to this, do you think?”

”My guess,” said Gwynn, ”some lad’s walking past one night, drunk, falls into it, hinge goes. The old dear doesn’t have anyone to fix it, or hasn’t got the money.”

”Hmm,” I said, looking around. Me being drawn to the right people by an unlikely sequence of events including an annoying gate. This had all the hallmarks of an imp intervention. An impervention. That old woman in the house. Was she two imps in a dress?

”You okay, Max?”

”Yeah, fine. Not cracking up in the slightest. Why do you ask?”

***

Tuesday, August 15

Champions League Qualifying Playoff Round, First Leg: Saltney Town versus Young Boys

”All right, shut the fuck up.” I strode around the dressing room, looking into the eyes of my players. ”My favourite movie is called How Green Was My Valley. Hands up if you’ve ever heard of that.”

No hands went up.

”Hands up if you have heard of Citizen Kane. The Maltese Falcon. Sergeant York. Yeah, good numbers on those three. Citizen Kane is widely regarded, especially by people who haven’t seen Die Hard, as the best movie ever made. The Maltese Falcon is the stuff that dreams are made of. Sergeant York’s one of the craziest true stories you’ll ever watch. None of those movies won the Oscar in 1941. You know what did? How Green Was My Valley.” I paused. ”It’s my favourite movie because it’s the Welshest film ever to win an Oscar, and today we are representing Wales and we must win.”

Peter Bauer let out an involuntary laugh and said, ”Sorry, boss, but this is awful.”

I shook my head, turned it into a nod, and tried again. ”It’s my favourite movie because although it seems to be authentically Welsh, it was actually written by an English guy who used Wales as fodder for his story. No? Try again. It’s about coal mining, and in a way, we’re mining for goals.”

”Boo!” yelled Peter. ”Get off the stage!”

Magnus said, ”Have you even seen the movie, Max?”

”Of course I haven’t,” I said. ”It sounds dreadful. Fine, fuck it. Let’s just neutralise the Swiss.”

Peter stood and applauded. ”The Great Orator is back!”

Dumi said, ”We make fun of the Swiss but neutrality was forced upon them by Napoleon. You see, in 1803 - ”

”Snakey in goal!” I yelled, rushing to the tactics board. ”Tony, Henry, Magnus, Davey, Dan, Omari, Ludo, Tom, Bertie, Lucas.” I moved the magnets around into a sort of 3-4-3 shape. Lucas Hussein was going to start. He was a DLC, according to the curse, but he was only CA 39 so I didn’t want him anywhere near the defence.

Only CA 39 at the age of 20. That was more terrible than my poetry, but he had been one of the first guys I had Playdarred after buying the Feedback Loop perk, so I got bonus XP every time he did something new. I was pretty sure that by starting him in a Champions League match I would get a bonus of 700 XP.

Worth it... as long as he didn’t cost us a goal.

”This team is fucking mint,” I lied. ”Those Swissies won’t know what hit them.” Young Boys had an average CA of 125. Our starting eleven would be CA 105.2. ”Right, quick recap. Young Boys are solid. They are decent on the ball, fairly well coached, good defensively. They aren’t going to give us goals easily. On the other hand, they’re not going to blow us open, either. Against most teams, they get into decent positions and do fuck all from that point on, but we’re not even going to let them get into those phases. We are going to Arsenal them. We will wear them down, push them back, grind them. Horseshoe passing around our defenders, but YB will be shuffling and sliding and as we send on more of our beefy boys, we’ll turn up the pressure, turn up the heat.”

The plan, as you will have guessed, was to use Bench Boost, because I felt there was a fair chance of getting an unassailable first-leg lead. If I started my many star defenders in the second leg, it was hard to imagine YB scoring twice, so anything above 2-0 today would be awesome. The best thing was, I wouldn’t even have to take any risks. We could be incredibly conservative in open play but then savage them from free kicks and corners. A Bench-Boosted Max Best firing Arsenal-style corners towards a Bench-Boosted Edgar Wilde, Peter Bauer, Colin Beckton? After an hour or so, I would send on Dumi, and that would be even more height, even more power. After the 5th sub, our average CA would be 133, but we would probably be playing somewhere closer to 140.

”MwaHahahahahaHAAAA!”

”Sorry, Max,” said Well In. ”Was that part of the team talk or was that your internal monologue escaping?”

”Er, monologue escaping. Nothing to worry about. I was just congratulating myself because I have thought of everything and nothing can go wrong.”

Well In winced. ”I wish you wouldn’t do that...”

***

Match report extract taken from News of the Blues.

Valley-ant Bordermen Get Green Light for Champions League; Swiss Misters Find Their Walls Are Full of Holes; Max Drives Them Cuckoo!

Saltney Town 3, Young Boys 0. What a night. What a performance! The Welsh champions have one foot in the Champions League. Chester FC’s Dan Badford and Tony Herbert could play against the giants of the continent: Barcelona, Leverkusen, Juventus, or Bodo/Glimt! And on this showing, what is there to fear? These Young Boys were sent to bed without any xG.

No match report would be complete without a full account of the goals, but I must start with the pre-match festivities. Festivities? There can be no other word. Saltney and Wrexham combined to put on a show. Music, dancing, lights, short clips from Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac. Then the breakout star of the night. Was it Dan Badford? Lucas Hussein? Bertie Kornek?

No, it was Saltney Town’s new mascot, who emerged into the stadium surrounded by gigantic pillars of flame, bombastic music, all the pomp and ceremony you could wish for.

Cue peals of laughter, even from hardened Wrexham fans.

The new mascot is called Bridgey, and is shaped like a bridge.

Bridgey can barely stand upright, because it is shaped like a bridge. Bridgey needs almost constant intervention in order to stay mobile, and this intervention was provided by members of 3 R Welsh, the local regiment, who grew increasingly exasperated as Bridgey kept falling over.

The army boys had to show courage under fire for the main event. Bridgey, with help, was propped up with a giant apple on its head. Max Best took a football, placed it down like he would a free kick, and smacked it at high speed right into the middle of the apple.

It might not have intimidated the Swiss team, but it certainly intimidated the new mascot - he swooned and had to be dragged out.

Cue the match. Lucas Hussein’s night ended after two minutes, to be replaced by Max Best. Was it mind games or had Hussein picked up an injury?

Best shepherded his young team through the rest of the half, and the Swiss seemed happy to go into the break at nil-nil.

The second half was pure fireworks, though. On went Saltney’s big guns, and what unfolded must have been painful for the Swiss coach to watch. They lost duel after duel, retreated deeper and deeper, and all the while their goal was peppered with shots. Corners were brutal, with Max Best having so many brilliant headers of a ball to aim for. The six-yard box was like a cheese fondue with sixteen forks, and the Swiss goalie kept losing his bread. He became more and more flustered as he was blocked and bullied. Welcome to Wrexham!

The first goal, though, was a thing of beauty. A free kick in Max Best territory. The man himself thundered towards the ball, aiming for the top right with a cannonball. Honestly, from the run up alone you could have sketched the trajectory of the ball. But then he slowed and hit one of his Beckham-esque curlers, round, round, round the wall, left, left, top left. Absolutely stunning. Utter genius.

Best celebrated by running to the touchline and eating a slice of cheddar cheese. Take that, Emmental!

The pounding continued. Edgar Wilde scored from a Max Best corner. At the next, as everyone rushed to the near post, Peter Bauer took a step back, Max clipped the ball to him, and he volleyed a fraction wide from the edge of the box. Sensational!

Somehow the score didn’t tick up. But the Swiss invented LSD. Could there be some last-second drama?

Yes! Best shaped to float a cross to the far post and with the defender’s limbs pointing in four different directions, like the flag of his own nation, Max dribbled the ball past him and was fouled. Penalty kick!

Best took the ball, placed it, and eyed the right-hand side of the goal, which was where he scored against Pestis FC. Had the Swiss goalie done his homework? He had! He dived to the right. Best stepped forward... and struck the ball high down the middle of the goal.

Best ran around like a maniac, enjoying the moment without any hint of irony. That one meant something special to him. After the week he has had, it’s not hard to imagine that this was redemption. What a shame he won’t be able to play for Chester against Brighton this weekend! He’s on fire.

The final whistle went. Unless something stupendous happens in Bern next Wednesday, Wales will have a club in the Champions League! Some of the Wrexham fans near me celebrated almost as heartily as Max Best celebrated his goal. We are very close to a real-life fairytale, ladies and gentlemen. Max Best has kissed a tiny Welsh frog, which is one week from becoming a fully-fledged dragon.

”Can you tell me just one thing, Coxy,” said someone from Wrexham FC’s media team. ”That was all absolutely amazing, fantastic for Wales, I loved it, especially the second half... but the mascot. What’s that about? There’s no bridge at Saltney!”

“Huh!” I said. “I didn’t even think about that. You’re right! Huh. Well, maybe there should be!”